Generation War
by franmunier
Summary: She's looking at him. Again. She's looking at him as if she can recognise a part of herself in him: the most fragile and wounded part of her soul. Looking at him it's strange, in a curious and obsessive way. It's something she can't avoid, something she shouldn't do, but finds herself doing whenever he is alone.
1. Chapter 1

**Generation War**

**Summary: **She's looking at him. Again. She's looking at him as if she can recognise a part of herself in him: the most fragile and wounded part of her soul. Looking at him it's strange, in a curious and obsessive way. It's something she can't avoid, something she shouldn't do, but finds herself doing whenever he is alone.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Harry Potter. The one and only owner is J.K. Rowling. And I don't own Drive.

**AN: **English is not my first language, so I'm sorry for any lexical or grammatical mistake I made while writing this _piece of something_.

* * *

**Part One**

War always has an impact on people. In some tragic way, it builds a person from scratch, changing everything that has always been known: perceptions, feelings, meanings, relationships.

War is dust: it accumulates on people's shoulders until it becomes too heavy, too suffocating. But war is also scars: permanent marks of the psyche, long living traces of death and sorrow. War is whatever a person fears the most, and it is rarely merciful.

Dust and grief.

Physical and psychological wounds.

Loss and wandering in an unknown rotten land.

And then, after the storm, war leaves you alone, as a new _fragile _human being, surrounded by other broken people.

* * *

_22th October 1998_

She's looking at him. Again. She's looking at him as if she can recognise a part of herself in him: the most fragile and wounded part of her soul. Looking at him it's strange, in a curious and obsessive way. It's something she can't avoid, something she shouldn't do, but finds herself doing whenever he is alone – and it doesn't matter if he's really physically alone, or simply estranged, lost in thought, back to the waste land, the burial of the dead better known as war.

He's sitting on a bench in the courtyard, his back against the stony wall and a book in his hands. Dressed in his school uniform – grey jumper, emerald and silver tie, and black trousers – he seems to shiver, but his face shows nothing. He has to study. He needs to study. Noises, people, the frosty wind of Scotland: they don't matter because he needs to get lost in words and numbers. Words and numbers can erase pain and memories. Temporarily.

He's always reading, always writing on his tomes. _Just like her_. He's always quiet, disinterested, always with his head down – certainly not acting like the Draco Malfoy the school is used to. He doesn't look at her, doesn't even notice her presence. But she… damn, she does.

_What are you reading?_

_What are you thinking?_

_How are you feeling? _

_Are you lost, like me? _

_Are you in pain, like me? _

Questions, so many questions fill her mind each time she is mentally alone with him.

There is so much she wants to ask him, so much she wants to say to him.

_Does your scar hurt? Mine does._

_Do you regret your choices? I don't, but I wish I could have helped more. I wish I could have helped those like you._

* * *

_29th October 1998_

In some way, looking at him is healing, comforting, intellectually demanding.

Looking at him makes her realise some things she didn't know about herself. For example: now she knows that she is fascinated by the habits of the people around her, by the effects these habits have on people.

Now she knows that the only smile he allows himself is the one he unsuccessfully tries to hide after the first taste of his green apple at breakfast; now she is aware that he bites his lower lip as he reads something he finds intriguing.

Now she knows that he's kind to first years, even if they look at him with frightened expressions, that he's seriously a good student, and, shockingly, that he's not so terrible – physically speaking.

He's strikingly particular: handsome, in an unusual, almost timeless, aesthetical kind of way.

And this epiphany is what terrifies her most.

* * *

_15th December 1998_

"Watch we're you going, Granger."

His voice is deep, cracked, cold as the wintry breeze that is messing with his hair.

The grip on her shoulders tightens for a moment, as if he doesn't know who she is and who he is and what their history is.

"I'm sorry," she says, her voice soft and barely audible. The day is cold and dry, and it's snowing. The dark wounds of their souls are more visible in their eyes when everything around them is white, clear, pure, untouched. "I was… I was just…"

_Thinking about you. _

He sighs, and he seems tired. "It doesn't matter," he mutters, shoving past her without a glance.

* * *

_13th January 1999_

It's his.

_Green apples, tonka bean, cedar wood and sandalwood, and… new parchment._

She drops the knife, drawing the attention of her classmates, and lets her arms drop. The beat of her heart reaches her throat, her brain starts asking questions: why? When? How? Why him?

_Thump, thump, thump._

It's his, there's no doubt: _Amortentia_ never lies. Her talents – Hermione Granger's talents – never fail.

"Shit," she almost screams when she realises she's in trouble.

"Hermione?" Ginny puts a hand on her shoulder. "Everything ok?"

_No. Everything's a mess. My mind is a mess. He's not the shelter, the safe place I was looking for. He's only a subject I'm studying, a riddle I'm trying to understand. He's just someone as broken as I am._

"Yeah," she lies, faking a smile. "I can't place the scents."

Ginny breathes and then smirks. "Lucky you! Mine screams Harry Fucking Potter."

"Amortentia never lies," Hermione says, before landing her eyes on him.

His potion is almost finished, concentration is painted on every line of his aristocratic face.

She wants to know what the scents of his potion are. She doesn't want to be alone in this mess.


	2. Part Two: Something

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Harry Potter. The one and only owner is J.K. Rowling. And I don't own Drive.

**AN: **English is not my first language, so I'm sorry for any lexical or grammatical mistake I made while writing this piece of something.

This chapter is short, and I know it's confusing and strange. It's a mirror image of Hermione's feelings and thoughts. I could delete every single word and rewrite from the start, but… I know it wouldn't be the same.

I want to say thank you to all the people who decided to give me and this story a chance! I'm so extremely happy, you can't even imagine.

**Quote of the chap: **_"Beauty is terror, something that makes us quiver when we find ourselves before it." The Secret History, Donna Tartt _

Donna Tartt is one of the most important influent people in my life: her books and the way she uses the words in her works made me realise how important writing is for me. She made me think that maybe there's something in me that is worth believing, something I should take better care of. I've always loved to write; I've always seen writing as my shelter, my safe place, but I've never thought of it as something I should dedicate my life to. Now I do, and I've never been happier.

**Part Two: Something**

_15th January 1999_

_Green apples, Tonka bean, cedar wood and sandalwood, new parchment._

He's everywhere: on her school uniform, in her hair, in the air. The idea of him is everywhere and her conscience is eating at her because of what she's starting to feel.

Sometimes, what you learn enriches you. Other times, it consumes you slowly, especially when you refuse to accept the truth for what it really is: a sort of debacle, a disastrous failure of principles, the honest mirror of your feelings that does make you feel betrayed by yourself.

_And what is worse_, she thinks as she sips her Earl Grey, her deep chocolate eyes fixed on the rhythmic movement of her fingers on the breakfast table. _What is worse is that I feel something for an alluring façade._

The truth, the simple and undeniable truth is that she has been trying to find something beautiful even since the war, because beauty, although terrifying in its ways of affecting you, can draw a veil over decay. Beauty takes you by surprise, it challenges your morals and the way you have always seen the world. Beauty gives you something, a quiver that runs through your body, and in return it asks for a short breath of your soul: the breath you take in front of a wonderful piece of art or when you finally understand how simultaneously powerful and fragile nature is.

And physically – if you have never heard his hatred words, of course – Draco Malfoy is the epitome, the perfect description of beauty.

She blames the Greeks for all of what is happening to her, or whoever stated that _beauty is terror, something that makes us quiver when we find ourselves before it_.

And it's true. So frighteningly and incredibly true.

And he is… he's that _something_.

* * *

"You're acting strange," Ginny says gently, breaking the comfortable silence. Her eyebrows are furrowed in thought, her bright brown eyes sincerely worried. "Something's bothering you."

The Common Room is empty, silent, except for the echoes of the wild wind, but it's warm thanks to the fire that's lighting up the darkness of the wintry night.

Hermione looks up from the book, a little surprised by Ginny's statement, leaving a difficult passage of Arithmancy behind. It is sweet of her friend to care, to have noticed, but how… how could she explain something she can't even explain to herself?

_Half-truth_, a soft voice whispers in her head. _Not a truth, but not a lie_.

She blinks, hesitant, then she licks her lips gathering the nerve to speak.

"I feel it," she says, looking out of the window. "All of it. Loneliness, sorrow… death. Every time I look at the school grounds, every time I walk the hallways. Sometimes, even when I look at my own reflection in the mirror. War. It's always war and bad memories."

Ginny nods, and her sad eyes are speaking. She understands. How could she not?

"But there are times," Hermione says in a murmur, and a flash of _something _that screams_ I'm alive, I feel something, I am something, despite all this extreme sadness and lack of happiness_ enlightens her freckled skin.

_Something. _

_Something._

_Something._

It's_ something. _

And _something _is better than emptiness.

"There are times when I think there are ways out from this labyrinth stained of blood, green lights and dust," she admits, and in her voice there's a note of hopefulness. "I think I'm not ready to tell you what is helping me cope, because… because it's personal and I don't understand it yet!" she laughs, perhaps a bit hysterically, but she laughs. "But it's _light_, and, well, it's also _beauty_. It's something war took away from us. It's what we need to find again: light and beauty in something as tainted as us."

Ginny mimics her tiny smile, holding out a hand Hermione doesn't waste time holding tight. They're crying, but also smiling. Maybe this hold, their hands intertwined, is a starting point. Maybe, together, they can learn to live again.

"You're an amazing person, Hermione Granger."

* * *

_17th January 1999_

After several sleepless nights spent trying to figure out an escape, trying to label her mocking infatuation as something – always bloody _something_ – fleeting, she has decided to let it… be, because she is completely sure that her feelings are affected by some stupid philosophical idea and that they won't last eternally.

_After all, crushes come and go. Isn't it?_

* * *

_19__th__ January 1999_

_Let it be. Let it be. Let it be._

She's almost singing and not only in her head, because she thinks that, by doing so, it could be easier to just ignore his presence, the way he stubbornly avoids her eyes whenever she asks for ingredients, and the fact that she's clearly alone in her mess.

_Damn Professor Slughorn and his mixed pairs!_

"Granger," he says, making her jump. Then he rubs his slightly soaked forehead and adds: "Could you please stop making that irritating noise? People are trying to finish this bloody potion in peace."

Hermione wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes. "I'm not making any irritating noise."

His lips curl into the tiniest mocking smile she's ever seen and, although quite nerve-wrecking, it's something that suits him: he seems, for a brief instant, years younger, the carbon copy of the smart spoiled child he surely used to be.

"Yes you are," he shrugs, adding two lizard tails to their steaming potion. His grey eyes finds hers and he gestures to the cauldron with a head nod. "Make sure the sage is perfectly sliced before adding it to the rest."

"Don't use that tone with me," Hermione gives his shoulder a warning shove, not even acknowledging her gesture. He does, but says nothing. "You don't even know who are you talking to."

A soft sound and a quick glance at his direction tell her he's hiding a snicker behind the back of his hand.

"Hermione Granger: swot extraordinaire," he mutters, his voice deep and warmer than usual.

She lets out a grumbling sound, taking the plate full of sage in her trembling hands, and adds them to the potion, not so as cautiously as she should have. Mist and emerald smoke fill the classroom, creating panic in Slughorn's head and caos in the room; laughs and yells –_ Don't open your eyes! Close them! Finnigan, I said close your eyes!_ – echo in the average space and everything is suddenly blurred, but she doesn't care. She doesn't even pretend to care, because Draco Malfoy is staring at her with wide eyes full of surprise and… pride?

Her heart starts beating a tone louder saying a giant "fuck" to all those _let it be_ and _crushes come and go_. And she quivers. She quivers before letting out a soft, defeated breath.

It's stupid and childish, what she now knows she's truly feeling. It's self-destructive, maybe toxic, surely out of her character. But it's beautiful. It's beautiful because maybe… she can consider it as a starting point, a way to light up the dusty darkness that surrounds them.

He rubs his eyes, which, like hers, are reddening and swelling second after second, and then he shakes his head, showing her a truly amused smirk. "You're a crazy person, Hermione Granger."

And maybe his words and his amusement are a starting point, a way for him to make amends, a way for him to find the guts to say _I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I've said and done._

* * *

_19th January 1999_

_Maybe we are the fluorescent kids,_

_the thunder of spring_

_that will resuscitate this dry and sterile ruined land. _

_H.G._

* * *

_Happy Valentine's Day!_ ❤️ Have a good day or night, and remember that, even in your darkest times, there's someone who loves you unconditionally.


End file.
